Henri Matisse. A modern artist for two ages.
In 1905, accompanied by the artist Andre Derain, Matisse (then 35) went to Collioure in South West France, near the Spanish border. Here he moved on from Neo Impressionism to […]
Bruce on Art History
Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling compared
Rogier van der Weyden (a.k.a. Roger de la Pasture) (c1399-1464) was born in Tornai in the Burgundian Netherlands and served an apprenticeship there between 1427 and 1432 with the great […]
Northern Renaissance and Religion
In the mid fifteenth century there were very few media that suspended human disbelief, just visual art and acted plays, so the power of a virtual window into an alternate […]
Facade, 10b Elizabetes iela, Riga
Serendipity brought a number of factors together in the early 1900 to propagate an unprecedented building boom in Latvia that created the largest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture in the […]
Berthe Morisot, her Subjects and Reception
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) spent her entire adult life (except for vacations) living in the Passy district of Paris. She was one of the founders of Impressionism, one of its greatest […]
Gustav Klimt. Three Ages of Woman
This is a square oil painting on canvas, 180cm X 180cm, completed in 1905, when Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was at his artistic peak. It won the gold medal at the […]
La Primavera
Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492), leader of the family banking business, was one of the richest men in Europe and was effectively ruler of Florence at a key stage in the […]
Great Artists and Syphilis
Syphilis almost certainly came to Europe from America with Christopher Columbus’ crew. The first written records of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1494/5 in Naples, Italy. Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut Syphilitic Man […]
Dulwich Picture Gallery
The biggest tourist art attraction in London is probably the Impressionists at the National Gallery, but there are many other venues which are well worth visiting and often do not […]
Art by females
Open a coffee table book titled something like “50 Famous Artists” or “50 Famous Paintings” and you will see that ownership of a uterus is usually grounds for exclusion. Likewise […]